Detailed information
Dimensions
107 x 116 x 88
mm
Weight
668 g
Locality
Coronel Murta Jequitinhonha Valley Minas Gerais, Brazil
Condition
No recorded repairs
Although world-renowned for its tourmaline crystals Brazil is surprisingly not well-known for the black variety, Schorl. This superb cabinet-sized Brazilian Schorl is remarkably fine and comes from the Coronel Murta pegmatites, usually so famous for their vibrant colour-zoned Elbaite tourmaline crystals. What makes it so special it not just the perfection of the three-sided pyramidal termination on the thick prismatic Schorl crystal, but its association with a large bipyramidal glassy Quartz crystal to which it attaches at an oblique angle. The other side of the Quartz crystal has a long groove running across it where another tourmaline crystal must once have been embedded, but this is hidden away from the main display direction. The upper termination of what is quite a broad, wide, colourless, but slightly included Quartz crystal is in excellent condition and shows lovely stepped pyramidal surfaces. Its lower termination is present, but less clear due to the angle at which the crystal has developed. The Schorl crystal has a fractured base which forms the natural base upon which the specimen sits but upwards is simply stunning, made up of hundreds of individual thin prisms all perfectly aligned and packed within the outline of growth of the main prism in a mesmerizing manner and all terminating at slightly different lengths to produce a perfectly level outer pyramidal face on the prism. As an individual structural crystal this is a truly phenomenal tourmaline in so many aspects.
